


meet me in the silence, i'll let you cut me open (haunt me from the inside out, slow motion)

by voxofthevoid



Series: tear me to pieces, skin to bone (hello, welcome home) [2]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Anal Sex, Aroused Victim, Blood Play, Bucky Barnes as Captain America, Captivity, Drugs, Forced Orgasm, Knife Play, M/M, Non-Consensual Somnophilia, Nothing is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Oral Sex, Rape Aftermath, Sex Toys, Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier, Torture, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:21:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24142000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxofthevoid/pseuds/voxofthevoid
Summary: “I’m compromised, Natasha.”“He’s terrifying, isn’t he?” she says. “He always was, even as a story whispered to the girls in the Red Room. “I survived him once. And you—you did it twice. Not many people get to say that.”“Maybe he likes me,” Bucky says. He's smiling, mouth twisted up into a bitter rictus.Natasha shows more feeling at that than she has since before the fight. She winces.“I wouldn’t want to be liked by a ghost,” she says very quietly. “It doesn’t tend to end well.”Bucky doesn’t have the heart to tell her it was never going to, not for him, not since the mask came off.-The Winter Soldier gets the man of his dreams.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: tear me to pieces, skin to bone (hello, welcome home) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1702297
Comments: 163
Kudos: 588





	meet me in the silence, i'll let you cut me open (haunt me from the inside out, slow motion)

**Author's Note:**

> Note the tags! This is darker than the first part, and I’ve warned for everything I can think of, but if you’d like something else tagged, let me know. And you can find a general overview of warnings for **this entire series** on my[ tumblr here](https://voxofthevoid.tumblr.com/post/617313433516376064/hey-voxy-im-the-same-anon-who-asked-about-the).
> 
> The banner and moodboard are [kocuria's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kocuria) lovely work. Please go give her some love <3

* * *

* * *

“Hey, man.”

It’s Clint, leaning against the wall a few feet away from Bucky, deliberately within his peripheral vision. Bucky supposes he hasn’t made much of a secret of how little he appreciates being sneaked up on these days. He almost put a knife through Tony’s hand, for fuck’s sake.

“Hey. What’s wrong?”

There clearly is something wrong. Clint’s expression is serious bordering on grave, a stark change from the casual disinterest he sports whenever they’re on a mission. Natasha’s in the cockpit and Bucky, who already knows where this conversation is leading, has to wonder whether they drew straws to decide who’ll have to come talk to him.

Nah. Clint’s more of a rock-paper-scissors person, and Natasha doesn’t care because she knows she’ll win anyway.

“You sure you’re ready for this?”

Bucky sighs a little more forcefully than required.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” he asks flatly.

The answer’s there in the air. The _why_. None of them wants to say it because Bucky never reacts well to it. Clint’s silent for long enough that Bucky thinks he has chickened out. But no. Clint Barton is a certified dumbass, but he’s no coward.

“He did torture you, Sarge.”

Bucky doesn’t mean to laugh. It just happens. And once he starts, he can’t stop. He bends over the shield he was polishing, cackling into its cold, unyielding surface. It smells like blood to him, always does, even though he knows it’s in his head. The real scent is of paint and polish. Blood washes off vibranium all too easily.

“Fuck,” Clint swears, sharp enough to cut through Bucky’s laughter. “Shit, dammit, Sarge, _Bucky_ , are you—"

“It’s fine,” Bucky says, sitting upright, still laughing in short bursts of sound. Clint’s wearing an expression of acute discomfort. “Just—yeah, no shit, man. I know what I’m getting into.”

Clint purses his lips together. He’s not pleased, but Bucky knows even before he speaks that he’s going to let it be, at least until after the mission.

 _If_ there is an after, but Bucky’s not telling Clint that.

“Are you sure?” Clint asks, a last-ditch effort.

“I’m sure. I’m not alone this time.” He pauses and tries hard to keep his twisted smile off his face when he adds, “I can take him.”

Clint frowns but takes Bucky’s bland smile and silence as his cue to return to Natasha. He can hear the murmur of voices a few seconds later, the thick door of the cockpit not quite enough to withstand his serum-enhanced hearing. But he can only catch a word here and there, mostly his name. Steve could probably hear everything. His serum is better than Bucky’s, the real deal and not the counterfeit version.

He's stronger than Bucky, and the metal arm that can maybe level the playing field—well, Steve’s proved that’s no trouble either.

 _I can take him_ , he told Clint, and another bout of hysterical laughter bubbles up his throat as he thinks of how fucking well he took Steve. How he begged for it, there at the end.

He passed it off as torture. Had to, when he showed up after days of captivity looking worse for the wear. But the serum healed most of it by then and he wheedled his way out of a medical examination. Hill did make noises about a psych eval, but Bucky refused point-blank. And S.H.I.E.L.D, slowly recovering after rooting out its Hydra infestation and losing significant manpower in the process, couldn’t afford to bench Captain motherfucking America because he refused to see a shrink.

And it’s not like S.H.I.E.L.D has ever been all that concerned with its agents’ mental health. Half its personnel are batshit crazy. And the other half, as the Hydra debacle proved, were psychopaths and fascists.

Maybe Bucky should feel bad for taking advantage of S.H.I.E.L.D’s desperation. Fury and Hill might not care about his personal trauma, but they sure would about information on the Winter fucking Soldier, such as the fact that he was the first and original Captain America, the man whose will Bucky tried to honor when he put the Valkyrie in the ice—Peggy’s sharp, desperate voice telling him not to be a fucking coward ringing in his ears – and the man whose legacy the twenty-first century saddled him with, never mind whether Bucky wanted it.

He didn’t. He’s only ever wanted Steve. Fuck Captain America and fuck the Winter Soldier.

There are footsteps again, deliberately loud, as Natasha slinks into view. She’s wearing an expression Bucky has grown to dread in the last few months because pseudo-official S.H.I.E.L.D policy won’t stop Natasha Romanoff from interfering in the affairs of the rare few she considers her friends. It is, objectively, an endearing quality. In practice, when you’re the target of it, it’s anything but.

“No,” Bucky says, forestalling any prodding on her part. One exquisitely plucked red eyebrow rises into an arch. “Natasha, we’re not doing this again.”

“I haven’t even said anything.”

“I know you.” He reconsiders, then adds, “I know this part of you.”

Natasha gives him a smile, close-lipped but genuine. She also doesn’t fuck off, instead taking the seat beside Bucky, far enough that they don’t touch but close enough for him to feel the heat of her body because Natasha has never known not to push.

Bucky shifts away and doesn’t even pretend to be subtle. He just—

He can’t.

Steve was the last person to touch him. Bucky can still feel him sometimes, his huge, grasping hands and fever-hot body. He wonders, now and then, whether he’s so averse to touch because he genuinely can’t stand to feel another person’s skin on his or because he’s terrified their touch will overwrite his memories of Steve. He never wonders too long. He doesn’t want to know the answer.

“We’re not really sure it’s him,” Natasha says suddenly. Bucky comes back to himself with a jolt and wipes his sweaty palms on his tac pants before turning to her. She’s not watching him, thankfully, staring straight ahead instead with an unreadable expression.

“I know, Nat. It was in the briefing.”

“But it could be,” she says like Bucky hasn’t even spoken. “There’s a very high chance that it is. I don’t like it. It’s not like the Soldier to be sloppy.”

Even now, it rankles to hear others refer to Steve as the Soldier. But Bucky refuses to disclose the truth. It leaves him in a hell of his own making.

“I don’t think he was,” he tells her after a pause. “You’re just that good.”

That prompts a fleeting smile that doesn’t touch her eyes. Bucky doesn’t know _how_ he knows. There’s nothing, really, on Natasha’s face that gives it away. But between one second and the next, the realization dawns that maybe, just maybe, she’s not here for only Bucky’s sake.

Natasha Romanoff is scared.

Once, Bucky would have taken that as the severe warning it is. He did, back when he first went after Steve. He prepared and was as careful as he knew how to be, but none of it mattered a damn.

And now, with Steve’s parting note etched behind his eyelids, the frank truth is that Bucky’s not sure whether he wants to be careful.

“Nat,” Bucky calls softly. He would have laid a hand on her knee, once. He would have knocked his shoulder into hers. Now he just turns his head and holds her gaze, willing his conviction to show in his eyes. “It’s just another mission. And you’re a survivor. You’ll be fine.”

 _It's not you he wants_ , Bucky doesn’t say. It wouldn’t help anyway.

Natasha’s expression softens a little. Her lips curve up, and Bucky carefully does not stare at how her smile pulls at her scar. It never bothered him until he learned precisely who gave it to her.

“He left me with a scar,” she says as if reading his mind. “I’d like to return the favor.”

Bucky stifles the flare of anger at the thought of Steve being injured before it can show on his face, in his fists. He nods instead, and turns away, leaning back into his seat and closing his eyes.

Natasha stays with him for the rest of the flight but neither of them says another word.

-

_I won’t let you go a second time, Bucky Barnes_ , Steve’s note said. The words echo in Bucky’s head as the Winter Soldier calmly holds his own against the combined forces of Captain America, Black Widow, and Hawkeye.

They seemed to be winning, at first; Natasha and Bucky engaged him knife-to-knife while Clint lived up to his codename and rained hell on their black-clad target. And then Steve shrugged off a Widow’s bite, twisted away from the edge of the shield, and fired off a shot into the rafters that resulted in a harsh yelp followed by a string of curses on their comms.

“I’m okay,” Clint grits out after an agonizing minute, but it’s too late by then. The momentum has turned.

Natasha’s fighting for her life. And Bucky—Bucky’s stuck dancing around an enemy he can’t bring himself to truly harm, an enemy who seems to be utterly ignoring Bucky outside of fleeting, assessing glances. In the black mask and goggles, the only indication that Steve is _Steve_ is the hair, cut in the same style as the last time Bucky saw him. But he doesn’t need to see to know.

He knows it’s Steve deep in his bones.

 _Pray that we never meet again_ —a threat and promise, but Steve’s not even looking at him, and Bucky’s drowning under the weight of a secret he can’t voice.

Bucky grits his teeth and lets the shield fly. Steve doesn’t even look away from Natasha as he catches it in one hand, and he’s brutal as he brings it down on her. Bucky winces, surging forward, but it’s too late. Natasha flies into a wall and tumbles down into a heap. She’s moving the second she hits the ground, but Bucky can’t afford to look after her, not when Steve has turned to him, shield in hand and whole body radiating danger.

 _Well, you wanted his attention_ , says a dark little voice in his head, and that’s all the time Bucky has to reflect on his poor life choices before Steve’s on him, using his own shield against him, except it’s not his, not truly; it belongs to the gleaming white star on his uniform and Steve’s claim is stronger than that.

It's a pitiful fight. Bucky’s clumsy and off-balance, his hits glancing off Steve’s shield and tac gear. Steve’s got no such compunctions, and Bucky aches to see the eyes behind those goggles as he’s pummeled without mercy. It’s a relief when Steve puts him out of his misery and ends the fight, delivering a blow to Bucky’s skull that stuns him enough for Steve to catch him in a stranglehold.

When Bucky blinks the spots out of his vision, his back is pressed to Steve’s chest, and there’s a knife at his throat. Natasha’s standing again and she’s got a gun aimed at Steve, but to get him, she’ll have to shoot through Bucky.

Might not be so bad.

“Stand down,” he murmurs, lips at Bucky’s ear, the one that has his comm. It’s not Bucky he’s addressing. “You too, Hawkeye. Wherever you shoot from, I promise your good captain will die before I do.”

There’s a firm promise in those words. Natasha doesn’t lower her gun, but she doesn’t fire either. No arrow slices through the air.

Steve plucks the comm from Bucky’s ear, but he’s got one hand across his chest and another on the knife, and it takes Bucky a second to figure out that Steve grabbed the comm with his teeth. The knife at Bucky’s throat presses in, slicing through the thinner fabric there to press to his skin. Something drops to the ground, and when Bucky strains his eyes, he can make out the small, black comm.

“Hello again, Bucky,” Steve says, quiet enough that no one but Bucky will hear. “Come now. Don’t fight.”

Steve starts walking backward, knife slicing into Bucky’s skin when he doesn’t follow along. He stumbles back, breath coming fast as he tries to keep up with Steve. Natasha follows them with her eyes and gun but doesn’t move an inch. Her eyes are very wide.

It takes barely a minute for them to be out of the room. In hindsight, letting a fight erupt in the control room of an abandoned Hydra base wasn’t the best laid of plans. It’s quickly clear that Steve’s intimately familiar with the serpentine corridors of the base. He switches out the knife with a gun and herds Bucky ahead of him, pushing him to move fast and then faster. At some point, there are footprints behind them, but Steve takes a corner, then another, and those fade away.

“Steve—” Bucky tries once, but gets pistol-whipped on the back of his head for his trouble.

Eventually, they stumble outside. The night sky’s studded with stars and too beautiful a sight for what’s happening.

Steve’s close but not so close that Bucky can make a play for the gun. He stands there, looking at the sky, waiting for a bullet that just doesn’t come. Instead, he gets silence and Steve’s quiet, looming presence.

Then he moves, stepping closer to Bucky, and the knife’s back at his throat before he can react. Steve’s other arm slams across his chest again, holding Bucky uncomfortably tight. Steve’s silent as he uses the knife to tip Bucky’s chin back, baring his throat.

He feels vulnerable like this, exposed, and he can’t shake the feeling that if Natasha or Clint stumbles upon them now, it will only take one look at Bucky’s limp stance and arched neck for them to _know_.

And then Steve licks his neck.

His tongue is wet and hot on the cut he made, and it stings, the slick slide of it over slit skin. It hurts even more when Steve closes his mouth around the cut and sucks, rough and painful. He bites too, teeth closing in around the edges and digging in hard, tearing a strangled whimper out of Bucky.

He pulls back, Bucky still caged in his arms and panting like a racehorse.

Steve hums, dragging his noise up Bucky’s nape and hair before setting his mouth to his ear, lips gently brushing the lobe, breath falling warm on skin.

“What did I tell you, Bucky?”

Bucky’s slow to remember, slower to answer, and maybe he shouldn’t, but he can’t not speak.

“To pray,” Bucky whispers.

“And did you?” Steve asks, breathing the words like a secret.

Bucky shudders.

Everything happens very quickly after that. Steve’s hard heat pulls away from his back, and Bucky has just enough time try and turn around before he’s yanked into a chokehold that’s a far cry from the almost gentle way Steve caught him earlier.

He claws at Steve’s arms, half-instinct, but he might as well be tearing at a metal rod for all the good it does. He can go without oxygen longer than an unenhanced human, but not forever, and Steve knows it, not letting up an inch even when Bucky tries to play possum. He struggles again, fighting with all he’s got, but Steve’s an immovable object and Bucky’s far from an unstoppable force.

Just as black creeps in on the edges of his vision, he hears Steve say, “Should have prayed harder.”

-

The ride back is quiet. They’re all injured, and Clint’s worse off, having been shot in the shoulder. It’s a through-and-through. He’s quiet as Bucky cleans and bandages the wound but starts grumbling when Natasha, who’s diagnosed herself with a mild concussion, assigns Bucky to pilot duty. A single, quelling glance from her shuts Clint up.

Bucky can’t say he’s surprised when, ten minutes in, she slides into the co-pilot’s seat.

He doesn’t miss the considering glance she shoots his throat either. The cut’s healed now, but the bruises are still vivid and utterly exposed by his ratty tank top. He couldn’t wait to strip out of his suit after coming back inside, even the subdued stars and stripes of the stealth suit too much.

“I don’t think I’m going after him anymore.”

It’s testament to the kind of night they’ve had that Natasha doesn’t even bother looking at him. Normally, he’d get a piercing glance, maybe with an expression Bucky would be tempted to believe is genuine surprise.

Now, she’s looking blankly at the controls and doesn’t acknowledge Bucky beyond a faint hum.

It’s several minutes later that she asks, “Why?”

“You saw me.” Bucky chuckles, humorless. The healed cut throbs with the phantom sensation of Steve’s mouth. “I’m compromised, Natasha.”

That draws her gaze, but there’s none of the expected judgement there. If anything, she looks understanding.

“He’s terrifying, isn’t he?” she says very softly. “He always was, even as a story whispered to the girls in the Red Room. I think I knew him once. But they took those memories. All I have are flashes.”

“Nat—”

She shakes her head, stalling any unwanted sympathy.

“I survived him once. And you—you did it twice. Not many people get to say that.”

“I don’t think he was trying all that hard to kill us there.”

“He wasn’t. But he had you at his mercy. Alone. I would have killed you.”

“Ouch,” Bucky intones flatly. “Breaking my heart, Nat.”

She kicks him, steel-toed boot slamming into his shin. Bucky yelps but he’s laughing too, louder and for longer than he probably should. It’s not really funny. None of this is.

“Maybe he likes me,” he says when he calms down, mouth still twisted up, a bitter rictus.

Natasha shows more feeling at that than she has since before the fight. She winces.

“I wouldn’t want to be liked by a ghost,” she says very quietly. “It doesn’t tend to end well.”

Bucky doesn’t have the heart to tell her it was never going to, not for him, not since the mask came off.

-

The debrief takes hours.

It’s a waste of time. They’ve accomplished nothing except compromising one of Steve’s bases, but that’s unlikely to hit him all that hard. Fury does propose bringing the Avengers in, but half of them are already here, doing S.H.I.E.L.D’s dirty work. Thor is off-world. The Hulk isn’t suited to handling elusive mercenaries. And Tony’s once again in the on phase of his on-and-off retirement. And, as Hill points out, the Winter Soldier is a loose cannon, yes, but he’s not the only paid assassin on S.H.I.E.L.D’s radar. He’s just the most dangerous of the lot. He’s still only one man, not worth mobilizing the Avengers Initiative.

Bucky’s relieved when that plan’s shelved. Because he knows he’ll have to choose a side, and he doesn’t know what he’ll do, but it’s sure not to end well.

S.H.I.E.L.D lets them go eventually.

Bucky waves off Natasha’s probing gaze and trudges over to his apartment. It’s a cozy shithole in Brooklyn. Remind him of home—no, of the place he used to share with a boy who was home. He thought he already made peace with the fact that it was gone forever—that _Steve_ was gone forever. He knows, now, that he was only fooling himself.

He eats dry cereal for dinner and showers until his skin’s pruned. His body has healed by the time he crawls into bed, but his heart is a large, pulsing bruise.

He’s out like a light seconds after his head hits the pillow, and he dreams in blood-streaked gold.

-

In the morning, there’s a note on his coffee table.

Plain white paper and an address in a familiar, loopy handwriting.

Bucky sits on the couch for hours with his phone in hand, staring blankly at the numbers on it. There’s a total of twelve contacts. All of them are S.H.I.E.L.D or Avenger affiliated. Because that’s Bucky’s life, here in this century whose welcoming embrace suffocates him.

He leaves the shield behind.

-

The apartment is spanking new and sparsely furnished. The name on the lease won’t say Steve Rogers, that much Bucky’s sure of. Whatever name it does hold might not even exist in a few days. Because it’s clear, all too soon, that this place is being used for only one purpose. 

There’s a syringe on the bed, full of some clear liquid. There are no other notes. Bucky sweeps the apartment, every nook and cranny, and doesn’t find even a single bug.

He circles back to the bedroom and stands there for another out, staring at the syringe.

He came here expecting to meet Steve. Something ill-advised and clandestine. He thinks of the note in his apartment, the first one, stashed under his pillow. Easy for anyone to find, if it comes to that.

It will come to that.

 _Should have prayed harder_ , Steve said.

Bucky doesn’t think Steve realized that Bucky never prayed at all, that he couldn’t have even if he wanted to.

He rolls up his sleeve and lies down on the bed. The metal hand doesn’t shake on the plunger, but the rest of him does.

-

There’s no slow, sweet ascent to consciousness, not like last time. There’s no confused minute where he sees Steve and thinks he’s back in the war, mud-splattered and miserable but incandescently in love.

Bucky jerks awake with a whimper that’s more pleasure than pain.

Inside of him, something _vibrates_.

“Wh-what, where’s—”

“You’re awake.”

Bucky looks about wildly, but Steve’s right there, perched on the edge of the bed, as naked as Bucky is. He’s flipping a pocket knife between his fingers, something mesmerizing about the easy, repetitive moments.

Bucky’s stunned for a moment, until another jolt in his ass brings him crashing into awareness.

“Steve, what is that?” he asks, even as he scrambles to take stock of the situation. The room is unfamiliar. He’s tied up like last time, metal cuffs around his arms. The pressure sensors on his left arm pick up an extra band, and Bucky knows what it is, remembers how easily Steve rendered that arm useless before. His legs aren’t bound, but that’s cold comfort when he can feel _it_ inside of him, something thick and long and utterly unyielding.

It vibrates again, another jolt driving home the fact that Steve cuffed him and opened him up and stuck a fucking vibrating dildo in him.

And his cock’s half-hard already, fat with blood from the physical stimulus, and it makes him wonder how long Steve’s been—been _playing_ with him.

He’s just watching Bucky now, still flipping the knife. There’s something about his gaze, a sharp, piercing quality, that makes Bucky feel more obscenely exposed than his spread legs do.

He closes them, thigh pressing together, and regrets it when that just makes the dildo shift and press up against his prostate. Maybe it shows on his face because Steve smiles, sudden and unpleasant, and he does something Bucky can’t see, and suddenly, the dildo’s quivering to life, and _it doesn’t stop_ , a persistent thrum unlike the harsh jolts of before.

It's okay, at first, nothing Bucky hasn’t felt before, but then it doesn’t let up, just keeps going and going, vibrating against muscles that feel raw and tender.

“Steve—”

Speaking is a mistake; his voice is a soft, shuddering thing. He knows he doesn’t imagine the way Steve’s eyes sharpen at the sound of it, his smile acquiring a distinctly predatory tinge.

Bucky shakes his head and bites his lips against any noise that wants to escape, and he stays like that until he can’t take it anymore, until that single line of stimulation tangles with sheer physical need and pure animal fear to get him shaking and panting, heart in his throat and sweat beading along his skin.

“ _Steve_ ,” he says again, desperate. “Steve, stop it, turn it off.”

Steve looks amused now, like it’s the funniest thing in the world to see Bucky making demands.

But Steve does move, finally, abandoning his perch on the edge to climb in, the heat of him almost scorching Bucky’s overcooked skin. He can see the remote now, an elegant black thing with too many damn dials for a fucking sex toy, and it’s within Bucky’s reach except for how his arms are bound to the headboard above him.

The touch comes as a shock because it’s gentle, Steve’s palm flattening along Bucky’s belly. A muscle jumps in response, and Steve presses his hand down more firmly, watching the give of Bucky’s skin like it’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen.

He doesn’t take the hand away when he leans over and grabs the remote.

“Don’t,” Bucky barks, too late, and his voice rises into a shout when the vibration kicks up a notch.

His cock’s fully hard now, aching a little as it bounces with each of Bucky’s vain attempts to squirm into a better, kinder position. Steve watches him, and there’s something about the sight of him crouched beside Bucky with a sex toy in one hand and a knife in another that’s both hilarious and terrifying.

The remote’s abandoned first, and then it’s only terror.

“Please—” Bucky starts, but the flat of the blade is pressed to his lips, shutting him up effectively.

“What did I tell you, Bucky?”

He’s not expecting an answer, not with the knife still kissing Bucky’s mouth. And it’s not anger sharpening the words, but Bucky’s got no words for the emotion behind them. All he knows that it makes his hair stand on end.

“Did you miss me?” Steve asks, and this time, he does take the knife away. It’s new resting position at Bucky’s jugular is no less threatening, but Bucky’s more concerned with the answer expected of him and the effort required to string words together with that toy still moving inside him.

“I’ve missed you since I woke up,” he says honestly, then adds, “Turn it off. _Please_.”

“I’m not the man who died for you,” Steve returns easily. “And why? Feels good, doesn’t it? I can see it does.”

The last bit is said with a sidelong glance at Bucky’s dick, flushed red and a little wet at the tip. Steve reaches over with the hand not holding the knife to fondle it, cupping the top so that his rough palm slides against the sensitive head. Bucky grits his teeth against a moan, but he can’t help the way his hips jerk up. He cries out, a broken little sound punched out of him by Steve’s knife slicing into his skin.

Steve makes a low sound and takes his hand away from Bucky’s cock. That absence makes the sting of the cut stand out more starkly, and it mingles strangely with the way the dildo shifts inside of him at Bucky’s helpless squirming.

He forces his body to be still, but that doesn’t stop the toy from vibrating. He wills himself not to look at the cut, but that doesn’t stop blood from trickling down the side of his neck.

It’s not a surprise what Steve does next. A part of Bucky’s been prepared for it since the sharp edge of steel pressed against him, reminded starkly of that Hydra base yesterday—maybe yesterday. He doesn’t know how long Steve’s had him. He lost track so completely last time.

Just because Bucky’s expecting it doesn’t mean the heat of Steve’s mouth on the open cut is any less devastating.

He licks up the blood, lapping at the wound, each swipe of his tongue inducing another pulse of pain. It’s a shallow wound, easily clotted, and once it does, Steve turns his attention to the spilled blood, licking along Bucky’s skin until it’s warm with spit instead of blood.

All the while, the dildo shudders incessantly, but Bucky doesn’t think that’s why his cock is fucking _dripping_ now.

It doesn’t escape Steve’s notice either. The moment he’s upright, his eyes narrow in on Bucky’s dick. The corner of his mouth lifts in a faint smile that manages to be both pleased and foreboding.

“Look at that,” he murmurs, long index finger tapping the handle of his knife. “Always been a slut for pain, hm, Buck?”

Bucky shakes his head, but he doesn’t know what he’s denying.

“I want so bad to hurt you,” Steve says, hushed like he’s sharing a secret. He looks at Bucky who can’t stand to hold his haze but can’t look away either. “Been dreaming about it, the way you screamed and wanted it anyway.”

“I didn’t—”

“Don’t lie to me.” The slap’s light, for Steve, but it still makes Bucky’s head snap to the side. Steve fists a hand in his hair and jerks it back. “I like your hair like this, did I tell you that? No. We didn’t talk like this last time, did we? I had more practical concerns then. You have to understand, Bucky, that I regret what I did.”

Incredulity and relief war with each other for a second, but it’s the former that wins out, pushed to the forefront by the vibrations reminding Bucky of what Steve did when he was asleep and what he’s doing right now.

Still, Bucky asks, “You regret torturing me? Ra-raping me?”

That word tastes like ash on his tongue. He never said it out loud, not even to himself. Tried not to even think about it.

Steve blinks placidly. His grip on Bucky’s hair tightens to the point of pain. He squirms again, whining low in his throat when the toy presses against his prostate and sends sparks of too-intense pleasure up his spine.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Steve says. “I regret letting you go.”

Bucky’s heart couldn’t beat faster, but it would if it could, driven mad by fear and something else entirely.

“It’s alright,” Steve says, releasing Bucky’s hair to stroke down his face. A thumb nudges at his lips, dipping inside for just an instant before Steve pulls away. Bucky’s mouth tingles at the taste. “I have you now. And I’m not letting go.”

“Stop this,” Bucky pleads, but it’s listless, the less hopeful part of him recognizing wasted effort. “Come back with me.”

“Oh? Where?” Steve asks with an expression that makes it clear he’s humoring Bucky. “To a firing squad? Or you got a nice, dark cell all saved up for me?”

“I don’t—I wouldn’t—sweetheart, please—”

Another slap, harsher, shuts him up. His cheek smarts with swelling bruises.

“I’m not your sweetheart, Bucky. He died, remember? But you know what, I believe you. You’re far gone enough to spare me just because I look like him and remember fucking you. Your masters aren’t so desperate. That’s fine though. I don’t care about them. It’s you I want.”

“Why?” Bucky has to ask. “If I’m nothing to you, why do you want me?”

“Never said I didn’t want you. Never said you were nothing either.”

“Then—”

Steve cuts him before he can finish, slicing a line of fire along Bucky’s pectoral. He cuts off with a shocked cry, staring wide-eyed at the blood welling up. It’s a shallow cut, but it burns like a bitch, and Steve’s tongue is _scorching_ when he presses it flat to the cut. He sucks like he’s working a hickey into the skin. Bucky’s whole body goes taut like a steel wire, and it makes him clench up on the toy inside him. It’s maddening, the flare of pain under Steve’s mouth and the waves of pleasure from the toy.

Steve has blood on his mouth when he pulls back.

Bucky whines at the sight, arms straining against bonds that don’t given an inch.

Steve licks his lips and this time, he looks Bucky in the eye as he sets the knife to his cheek and draws a slow, searing line across his face. Bucky chokes down a whimper and blinks frantically to get rid of the tears, not wanting them to roll down and _into_ the fucking cut. Steve lowers his head slowly, and it doesn’t matter how often he does it, Bucky will never be prepared for the darting heat of his tongue and the simmering agony of it.

“This is terribly unhygienic,” Steve says, not quite raising his head, mouth hovering over the newest cut. The other are healing already, clotting, but there’s still blood on Bucky’s skin. “But that’s the beauty of the serum, isn’t it? We can walk off a lot more than this.”

Bucky’s surprised he finds his voice enough to speak.

“You don’t gotta test it.”

Steve’s answering smile seems genuinely amused. It softens his whole face, but that’s no relief against the kiss of the knife. The cut’s on Bucky’s other pec this time, a line of fire right under his nipple. He doesn’t make a sound, but a muscle jumps in his abdomen.

His cock has wilted a little but not enough, not with the toy going to town inside him and the heat of Steve’s mouth reminding him of better times.

“Ain’t testing it,” Steve says gruffly, biting down on Bucky’s nipple before sliding his mouth to the cut. When he pulls back, he’s wearing blood as lipstick, and god save him but it goes right to Bucky’s dick. “I like you like this, hurting for me.”

Bucky shudders helplessly, and it’s like he can’t stop once he starts, the pain and the pleasure mingling into a throbbing veil of sensation. He pants loudly, gritting his teeth against the sounds that want to come out, but it’s a losing battle and he breaks with a shattered scream when Steve makes a lazy arc with the knife and cuts open a jagged line along his thigh.

It's deeper, this cut, blood flowing generously. Bucky watches it spill out of the cut and down his bent thigh to pool at the crease of his hip, unsettlingly close to where his cock lies curved up.

“I’d suggest you stay still,” Steve says mildly, resting the knife harmlessly on the cut. The cold steel is only marginally kinder than Steve’s burning mouth. “Or not. I’ve seen you take worse. I’ve made you take worse.”

Bucky makes a soft, protesting noise, but he can’t seem to find his tongue and say that Steve’s never done this to him. Bound him, hit him, made him crawl and beg, opened him up so wide Bucky was sore for days, teased him and denied him until he cried—all of that, yes, but not this. No knives, no blood. They always fixed up each other’s scrapes, kissed bloodied knuckles, and bandaged split skin.

Steve barely spares him a glance before lifting the knife from the new cut. Bucky watches with his heart in his throat as he brings the blood-smeared blade closer and closer to his cock, and then, finally, he finds his voice.

“Stop!”

By some miracle, Steve does.

He raises an eyebrow at Bucky and his mouth is a thin line almost hidden by his beard, but there’s a light in his eyes that makes Bucky’s blood run cold in his overheated body.

“Please,” he tries, though he knows how it will end.

Steve looks away without speaking and finally rests the knife on Bucky’s cock, close to the head. It’s the blunt edge, but it’s still cold steel against the most delicate part of him. Steve doesn’t do anything, just keeps the knife there and stares intently while Bucky holds his breath and tries not to thrash from the toy’s incessant ministrations, from an instinctual bid for escape, from sheer fucking terror.

Steve makes a considering noise and takes the knife away. There’s blood on Bucky’s cock, an uneven smear over a prominent vein. He closes his eyes before Steve’s mouth touches it, but that doesn’t save him from the spike of pleasure, doesn’t stop the keening cry that leaves him when Steve seals his mouth over the head and takes him in, sucking slow and easy.

He pulls off after a few seconds, dragging his tongue up the length as he does, and Bucky’s helpless against the shudders that wrack his body.

“Open your eyes,” Steve says, idly tapping the knife against Bucky’s hip. Bucky shakes his head, breathing through his nose, and he’s not prepared for Steve to slap his thigh, right on the cut. Pain spears him deep, and Bucky arches off the bed, hips thrusting into air as the toy shifts inside him, still vibrating.

He opens his eyes.

Steve looks down at him with a satisfied expression, and Bucky doesn’t really mean to, but his gaze trails down. He’s not surprised to find Steve hard between his legs, but it still makes something hot coil tight in his belly. Steve doesn’t miss it, and he laughs, peering down at Bucky with an expression of twisted fondness.

“You can have it soon,” he says, a promise in his tone, and Bucky opens his mouth to say that’s not what he meant, what he wants, but nothing comes out. Steve smirks and continues, “But I’ll give you something else first.”

The way he runs a finger along the edge of his knife leaves little doubt as to what he means.

Bucky’s already a blood-stained mess. Most of the cuts have stopped bleeding, the shallower ones half-healed. It hurts, a stinging ache that seems to have spread throughout his body.

And, perversely, Bucky’s cock throbs in time to each pulse of pain. The toy doesn’t help, still thrumming away in his ass, too much and not enough.

Steve moves, suddenly, and Bucky starts, pulling at his cuffs, but Steve only straddles him, settling down on Bucky’s thighs. It puts pressure on the sluggishly bleeding cut there and Steve knows it, smiling faintly at Bucky’s whimper.

“Tell me something, Bucky,” he says, voice lowered as if he’s whispering a secret. “Why are you here?”

“You put me here,” Bucky snaps unthinkingly before he realizes what Steve’s angling for.

“I gave you an address and a drug,” Steve points out mildly. “I didn’t make you go there. I didn’t make you push the plunger.”

There’s nothing Bucky can say to that because it’s the truth, bleak and unfettered.

Steve’s knuckles brush his cheek, feather-light where Bucky expected a blow. The cut on his face stings.

“What did you think I’d do, Sergeant? Sit you down and talk? I warned you. I told you to stay away.”

Bucky shakes his head, and he feels it, the futility sinking cold into his bones, deeper than the pulsing heat of the cuts can touch.

“It’s you,” he says helplessly. “Steve, it’s _you_.”

Steve closes his eyes. Like this, with his long lashes sweeping his soft, pale skin and his mouth a line of pink between his neatly trimmed beard, Steve looks almost soft. He looks like the man Bucky loved. Loves. God, he aches for that skin-and-rags boy who went into a machine and came out a weapon and still held Bucky like a treasure.

Then he opens his eyes, and the illusion shatters.

There’s nothing kind about Steve’s eyes now. They cut through Bucky even at their softest.

But when he leans down to press his mouth to Bucky’s, he gasps into it and doesn’t pull away. Let Steve bite at his lips and lick into his mouth, lets him curl his tongue, wet and wicked, and pull a groan out of Bucky.

He tastes like blood.

“I’m going to carve my name on you, Bucky Barnes,” Steve says when they part. He means it very literally, Bucky finds out a few seconds later as the knife is set to the taut skin of his abdomen.

Bucky screams this time. He holds still against the pulse of the toy and the slice of the knife, and he screams his throat out, begging and begging and watching it fall on uncaring ears as Steve cuts the looping letters of his name into Bucky’s flesh.

It hurts so much, each cut shallow enough to burn and deep enough to bleed. Steve’s hand doesn’t shake as he moves the knife in purposeful strokes, carving Bucky up with furrowed brows and a mad glint in his eye.

When he’s done, Bucky’s sobbing with every breath and burning all over.

Steve wipes the blood away with his hand and that hurts too.

But Bucky looks. Can’t stop himself. He catches sight of raw-looking curves and lines before more blood wells up and blurs the letters.

Steve looks pleased. He puts the knife away. Throws it, carelessly, on the mattress. Bucky watches it leave red streaks on the white sheets. His fingers twitch.

Fingers touch his cheek. They’re clean. No blood. But when they pull back, they’re wet with tears. Bucky’s tears. Steve brings the fingers to his mouth and sucks them clean, eyes half-lidded.

He’s consuming Bucky, bit by bit. Soon, there will be nothing left but the pieces of him inside Steve’s belly.

“You with me, Buck?”

Familiar sounds, familiar voice. Ingrained response.

“Yessteve.”

Takes him a moment to recognize his voice; hoarse, slurred. His throat hurts when he speaks.

But Steve smiles, and that’s—that’s good.

He’s kissed again. It’s gentle; Steve’s body hovers above his own, sparing his bloodied, aching body more pain. But their mouths press firmly together, and Bucky doesn’t have to do anything, just part his lips and let Steve takes what he wants. It’s always good, when Steve takes what he wants. Used to be that he’d tell Bucky about it first, but things change, don’t they?

Steve makes a sound when he pulls back. It’s not a laugh. It’s not not one. He strokes Bucky’s cheek again, wiping the tears away and smearing his skin with blood that gleams red at the edge of his vision.

“Look at me.”

Bucky blinks blearily. Drags his eyes away from the bloodied mess on his stomach, towards bright, blinding blue.

“Say my name.”

“Steve?”

It’s a question. Bucky knows it’s not one with an answer.

Steve just smiles.

“I’m going to give you a choice.”

Steve reaches for something, but Bucky can’t look away from Steve’s crinkled blue eyes to see. He doesn’t have to; the toy in his ass suddenly goes still, and Bucky cries out at the sudden _lack_ of it, and fuck, he doesn’t realize how bad he was trembling, how hazy his head was, until it’s not there anymore.

Steve’s watching him intently, the black remote held casually in one hand. That’s when Bucky notices something else—a black band on his wrist, like a cuff, and it would be innocuous, but something about it doesn’t sit right with Bucky, well-honed instincts bristling.

“What is that?” he asks even though he probably shouldn’t.

“I don’t think you want to find out right now,” Steve says. He sets the remote aside and shifts forward a little until he can wrap one calloused hand around both of their cocks. Bucky hisses at the sensation, his dick reacting predictably to the touch and to the press of Steve’s hard length. “About that choice. I can fuck your mouth until I come. Leave the toy turned off. And then I’ll cut you until you pass out. Or, I can fuck your ass, and I won’t cut you anymore, but after I’m done, the plug’s going back in you, and I’m going to keep making you come until you pass out. What do you say, Buck?”

It takes Bucky several seconds to even process what he’s saying. And then longer to believe it.

 _What do you say, Buck?_ Steve asks, like he’s just holding up two of his dad’s old shirts with a grim smile and asking Bucky which one he should wear to a date he’s going to spend hours being miserable at.

 _What do you say,_ he asks like he did, sprawled on a motel bed in London with Bucky curled up at his feet, tapping his cock against Bucky’s mouth and teasing with that glint in his eye that drove Bucky wild.

Incredulity wars with something else, something that makes his cheeks flush hard enough to overshadow the throbbing heat from where Steve’s name is carved on him.

“Well?” Steve demands, and there’s an impatient note in his voice but his eyes are plainly amused. “Tick tock, Buck. Choose or I’ll choose for you, and pal, I might just decide to do everything.”

“Don’t do this,” Bucky says like a broken record, and it doesn’t matter that it’s useless, he needs to say it. “Steve, please. I _can’t_ anymore.”

“Sure you can,” Steve replies easily. “You’re conscious, aren’t you? These bodies of ours can take a lot, and I haven’t pushed you that much today. So c’mon. What will it be?”

“Why? Why would you—why—”

He finds he can’t complete the thought. It gets stuck in his throat, makes him choke.

Steve understands him anyway.

“Why am I making you choose?” He shrugs. “Because I can.” He leans in, then, almost like he’s gonna kiss Bucky. It makes his cock grind down against Bucky’s, pulling a wrecked little noise out of him. “Mostly though, I just want to hear you ask for it. You’re a vision when you beg, you know what? So goddamn needy.”

This, Bucky knows, is not a memory or a dream. Steve knows, intimately, what it’s like to have Bucky beg for a touch, for a hand on his cock, for Steve to just come inside him, please.

“Choose, Bucky,” Steve says, and his voice is hard now, all traces of humor gone. He leans back again, and his hand tightens around their dicks to the point of pain.

“My—you—the second one.”

Steve just raises an unimpressed eyebrow.

“Use your words.”

Bucky squeezes his eyes shut.

“Stop cutting. Fuck my ass.”

Steve huffs a laugh. He lets go of their cocks, and Bucky’s bounces a little, flushed and fully hard now. The pleasurable ache of it stands in sharp counterpoint to the pain all over his body and the dull throb inside of him. Steve’s quick to settle between Bucky’s legs, spreading them wide to make room for his bulk.

His legs feel so weak, shaking like a newborn colt’s in Steve’s grip.

Steve’s not gentle when he pulls the toy out. Bucky catches sight of something big and black before vanishes into the folds of the sheets, and then he doesn’t care because Steve’s shoving three fingers into him, just like that, plugging up the emptiness the toy left. It burns anyway, and Bucky tightens up without meaning to, biting his lips against the shout that wants to escape.

“I’d say I’m disappointed,” says Steve, voice maddeningly casual, “but I’m not, really. Been wanting to shove myself inside you since I opened you up for that plug. You made the sweetest noises in your sleep, you know that? Like you couldn’t get enough.”

Bucky shakes his head, but the denial goes unseen. Steve’s staring at where his fingers are buried inside Bucky, and it’s embarrassing even now to be looked at so intently there. Bucky shifts restlessly and regrets it when each twitch of his muscles pulls at a healed or healing wound.

Steve pulls his fingers out and grabs the lube. It was on the bed and Bucky didn’t even notice, but Steve must have tossed it there when Bucky was passed out and at his mercy.

Bucky chose to be passed out and at his mercy. But not this, god, not this.

“Well, what were you expecting?” Steve says, not even looking up from where he’s lubing his cock, and Bucky realizes with a sinking feeling that he must have said that out loud. “Did I ever give you the impression that I would be sweet to you?”

Steve’s voice dips mockingly on ‘sweet.’ It makes Bucky’s throat tighten around something harsh and wet.

“You’re Steve,” he says, and there’s a lot he’s not saying, that he doesn’t have the words to say. He’s not so sure it matters anymore.

Steve just grabs his legs and bends him in half, and fuck, _fuck_ , it hurts, Steve’s name blazing on his skin, and then Steve’s pushing in, and he’s a lot to take on a good day, and Bucky just about blacks out at the impossible, incessant _pressure_.

There’s no mercy in it. Steve takes him in a single, savage thrust, and his pleased groan is drowned out by Bucky’s shuddering scream.

Steve doesn’t stop to croon or prod at Bucky, just starts fucking him, that great, powerful body turned into this—pain and fire and forced pleasure. Bucky runs out of breath to scream but gutted sounds are fucked out of him with each thrust, even as the burn of Steve’s cock spikes into something sharper and agonizingly _good_.

“You were made for this,” Steve says, driving hard into Bucky’s body, and he doesn’t bother with a breathless denial when his body’s doing the talking for him, cock dripping and ass clenching like they can’t get enough of Steve’s exquisite violence.

The pain doesn’t fade as the pleasure crests. He’s still a bloody wreck, and each brutal jolt of his body throws the various cuts into sharp relief. The carving on his stomach is the worst, a deeper ache than the rest, but it mingles oddly with the pleasure twisting in his gut, two extremes molded forcibly together into a barrage of sensation that fills his mind with white noise.

Steve grunts, pushing at Bucky’s thighs to flatten them more, and then his weight’s on them as he leans in for a kiss that Bucky gasps into. Steve bites his lips until Bucky’s whining at him, then licks into him hard and dirty, kissing him like he wants to eat him alive. Bucky’s flooded with the taste and heat of Steve, every sense overwhelmed as he’s fucked within an inch of his life and kissed with even less mercy.

And he’s spiraling all the while, cock bouncing between their bodies, painfully hard and drenched in precum. Like this, with Steve bowed over him like a mountain turned human, the faintest twitch of his hips makes it grind hard against Steve’s abs.

It’s the kiss that sets him off. Steve swipes his tongue over Bucky’s lips and just presses their mouth together, a harsh collision Bucky cuts his lips on, and just like that, he’s coming, whimpering with the taste of blood in his mouth. Steve fucks him through it, and his eyes are pleased and possessive, looking down between them to watch Bucky’s cock jerk through his climax, spurting come all over them both. Some of it falls on his cuts, and that hurts too, but Steve _growls_ at the sight, teeth bared in a smile that’s barely human.

He fucks Bucky faster, harder, making him shout through the aftershocks and try and strain against his cuffs again, except it’s harder with him stretched out like this, virtually no leverage. He can only go where Steve wants him, and where Steve wants him is on his back with his legs in the air, exposed for the ruthless plunge of his cock.

Steve throws his head back when he comes, and in the moment before wet heat burns through Bucky’s walls, he’s mesmerized by the bulging muscles and straining tendons of his throat.

Steve jerks his hips through his orgasm, some of his come trickling out between thrusts. It’s messy, drenching Bucky’s hole and sliding down his crack, but he’s always liked it, being dirtied up like this, and the flash of heat in his gut is familiar. When Steve pulls out, Bucky’s dick is half-hard again, covered in its own cooling mess.

Bucky’s legs shake when they unwind from being pressed tight to his torso. The movement sets off another wave of hurts, but what makes Bucky’s heart beat double time is how Steve idly bends one into the air while his free hand roots around the bed for something. It emerges with a dildo, and it says something about the damn thing’s size that Steve’s hand doesn’t completely dwarf it.

“Oh, god, don’t—”

That’s as far as he gets before Steve’s shoving the thing into him, all force and no finesse, and the worst part is how it slides in so easy with Bucky fucked wide open from Steve’s cock. He still feels every inch of it, its unyielding smoothness a far cry from Steve’s hot flesh.

“Hm.” It’s not a word, more a sound, and no less ominous for it. Steve vindicates him by sliding his thumb alongside the toy, barely sparing an upward glance at Bucky’s startled cry. “You’re pretty loose. This might fall right out.”

He tugs at Bucky’s rim, thumb crooking cruelly. Bucky’s breath breaks on a sob.

“Maybe I should tighten you up some. What about that, Bucky?”

“N-no.”

Steve does look at him at that, an eyebrow arched pointedly.

“No?”

Bucky shuts his eyes again and says, “It won’t fall out. I—I won’t let it.”

His tongue trips over the words, but it’s better than finding out what Steve’s idea of _tightening him up_ is. Bucky can imagine a thing or two, and they make his balls want to crawl up his asshole. The worst part is that his dick is interested because Steve’s always made fear all twist up into something darker, dirtier. Maybe it’s not Steve, maybe it’s just Bucky and the way he’s wired, but it’s always been Steve who saw that part of him, who drew it out and made it dance, and that’s not an association Bucky’s ever been able to—or wanted to—shake.

“You really were made for this,” Steve says and, unlike the filthy drop of his voice when he said the same earlier, his tone’s harder to pinpoint. There’s something about it that sizzles through Bucky’s veins. “I’ll hold you to that.”

And just like that, it starts, the toy buzzing to life almost violently.

It’s a higher setting, Bucky realizes in a single second of clarity before he starts thrashing. Steve’s still there between his thighs, watching Bucky with keen eyes, unheeding of the twitching legs on either side of him. And then he wraps a hand around Bucky’s cock and everything goes white-hot.

The second orgasm’s easy, pulled out of him with just a few strokes of Steve’s hand. But he doesn’t stop, working Bucky’s limp, come-stained dick through the aftershocks and beyond, quickly turning the sting of oversensitivity into something sharp and painful.

“Stop, _stop_ ,” Bucky cries out between fruitless attempts to twist away from the touch. “It hurts, Steve, it’s too much, please—”

Steve just places his other hand above the name he carved on Bucky’s skin. It’s not bleeding anymore, but the touch presses in on the raw and aching cuts. The flesh there seems to throb against Steve’s hand in time with Bucky’s pulse.

Steve lets go of his cock, and the moment of reprieve is shattered when the vibrations get stronger.

Bucky arches off the bed with a howl. Steve pushes down mercilessly on the carved flesh, and Bucky slams back on the bed with a pained whimper. It rises into a whine when Steve grabs his cock again and starts stroking, faster and rougher, the pace made slick by Bucky’s own come. The serum’s a gift that keeps on fucking giving, and all too soon, pleasure sparks up his spine and his cock fills in Steve’s hand.

Bucky writhes the whole time, body trembling almost violently as a third orgasm is torn out of him.

The dildo is an incessant hurt now, thrumming maddeningly against his swollen, sensitive prostate. And Steve’s still got a hand on his cock, and Bucky doesn’t get soft this time as he’s held in a wet, tight fist and jerked to the edge that rises up to swallow him whole.

He screams as he comes again, a hoarse, pathetic sound that’s a plea all on its own.

“I can’t,” he forces out when Steve show no signs of stopping. “It fucking burns, Steve, please, I _can’t_.”

Steve spares him a brief glance and takes his hand off Bucky’s cock. The toy’s still inside, and Steve never had to worry about it slipping out because Bucky’s a tense, tight mess, walls clenching around the plug like they can push it out that way.

“You chose this,” Steve says mildly as he crawls over Bucky’s thigh and crawls up the bed. “How about a distraction? Open your mouth.”

Steve’s hard, of course he is, cock jutting out proudly, thick and flushed. Steve doesn’t give a Bucky a chance to open his mouth so much as grip his jaw with fingers that can crush bone and force him wide open.

The angle’s awkward, but Steve fills his mouth until he’s choking on it, struggling to breathe between the cock in his mouth and the toy in his ass and the steady ache on his stomach. Steve thumbs at Bucky’s bulging cheek, then pulls back and pushes deep at a different angle, letting his cock hit the back of Bucky’s throat. He gags, whole body jerking in a vain bid at escape, but Steve keeps him there and fucks his mouth, makes him drool and choke and beg through the dick in his mouth as he’s burnt alive from the inside out, until he doesn’t know which way’s up.

He comes a fifth time, and it’s more pain that pleasure, cock twitching dry in a pool of its own mess. But Steve’s still fucking his mouth, and the plug’s still carving him open, and it’s a relief to just let the dark sweep him up.

-

Bucky comes to in something warm and pleasant, held firmly against soft, solid flesh.

“Steve?” he murmurs before he’s quite awake.

And then he’s _awake_.

“That’s right,” says Steve’s voice, the words whispered right into Bucky’s ear.

There’s no helping the way his heartbeat climbs and his breathing turns ragged. He still aches, whole body pulsing none too pleasantly. He must have shifted, tensed on instinct, because Steve tightens his arms around him.

Bucky makes a soft, scared noise.

“Relax,” Steve says, a note in his voice saying he knows full well what a joke that is. “I’m not going to hurt you now. We’re just taking a bath.”

One of his hands slide down Bucky’s skin, and fuck, yes, they are in a bathtub, Bucky lying back on Steve, half his torso above the water and the rest submerged. Steve’s touch feels strange under the water, a smooth, unthreatening slide that doesn’t fit him at all.

“Do you know where we are?”

Bucky shakes his head.

“Italy. I thought it would be fitting. This is where we met first.”

It’s a bad idea, but Bucky never could keep his mouth shut.

“We met in Brooklyn in the ‘30s.”

This time, it’s Steve who tenses. Bucky waits for a blow that doesn’t come. Instead, he gets Steve nosing along his jaw and into his hair, nuzzling into the strands in a way that’s oddly tender.

“They don’t know yet,” Steve says, a complete non-sequitur. There’s a beat of weighted silence before he explains. “No uproar about Captain America missing. How long will it take, you think?”

Bucky says nothing.

He thinks of Natasha in the Quinjet and wonders if she’ll come for him.

Wonders if he wants her to, whether it will matter.

“You didn’t bring the shield,” Steve says very softly.

This time, the answer is beyond Bucky’s will to rein it in.

“Didn’t know it was Captain America you wanted.”

A large, warm palm cups his face. It’s so gentle. Bucky swallows a whimper.

He goes easily when his head is turned to the side. Steve looks different with his hair and beard wet. Older. Kinder. He’s visibly pleased, eyes crinkled at the corners and mouth curved into a smile that isn’t edged with cruelty.

“No. I wanted the man in my dreams. He’s the only thing that’s been mine for a long time.”

The kiss is chaste, but Bucky feels electrified, heart pounding, body trembling.

“You’re mine,” Steve says, and he sounds so sure.

**Author's Note:**

> Drop me a comment if you can <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [collab: voxofthevoid](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23361448) by [kocuria-visuals (kocuria)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kocuria/pseuds/kocuria-visuals)




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